COMMENTARY : Tyree uses Super Bowl afterglow as platform
Posted on Friday, June 27, 2008
BOLTON LANDING, N. Y. — David Tyree knows that nobody, himself included, had cast him as The Hero going into Super Bowl XLII.
“I wasn’t supposed to be The Guy,” he said simply.
If you’d gone up and down the rosters of the New York Giants and New England Patriots, you’d have picked a dozen players more likely to make the key catch.
But it was Tyree, the Giants’ fourth receiver best known as a special teams ace, who stepped into the starring role, snaring a critical 32-yard pass on the game-winning drive.
The thing is, the play for which Tyree will always be remembered wasn’t designed to go to him. In fact, he said, nine times out of 10 quarterback Eli Manning would have thrown to another wideout. Steve Smith had been the first option coming out of the slot.
But as the final minute neared in the Giants’ epic 17-14 upset victory, protection broke down, Manning ran for his life, and somehow he spotted Tyree coming back for the ball.
Ah, the catch. Closing in on five months later, appreciation only grows for Tyree’s leaping grab over Patriots safety Rodney Harrison, the ball pinned to his helmet and momentarily loose, the bodies crashing to the turf.
Tyree said that at that moment his mind reverted to that of a toddler: Minemine-mine. He wasn’t letting go.
How good was the catch ? It completely overshadows his 5-yard touchdown reception earlier in the fourth quarter. “Nobody cares,” Tyree said, adding he would have been content with just that one grab had the Giants won. But football history had a different idea.
No matter what the 28-year-old does the rest of his career, that 32-yard circus catch is how he’ll be remembered. That’s fine for David Tyree the football player.
But David Tyree the person wants to be remembered not for the catch but for what the catch has allowed him to do.
The title of his autobiography, More Than Just The Catch, pretty much captures what David Tyree is all about: “My life has added up to so much more than one moment.”
Tyree came here Tuesday to accept the Giants’ collective award as New Yorkers of the Year from the New York State Broadcasters Association. He said because of that one play, people are willing to listen to what he has to say.
“I can leave a great mark upon a generation or life,” Tyree said. “I’m more interested in the lives I could impact by making that catch. That’s the legacy I’m interested in.”
Tyree and his wife, Leilah, have four children, including twins born a little less than three weeks after the Super Bowl.
“She’s been handling 90 percent of the work,” Tyree said. “I’ve probably been snoozing a little more than I should.”
Not much, though. Tyree, who became a devout Christian four years ago (more in a minute ), is involved with charities and has started the ministry Next in Line, designed to mentor kids in his native New Jersey.
Tyree came to this life after coming out of Syracuse as a 2003 sixthrounder — and a hard partyer with an affection for pot. In 2004, he got busted with a half-pound of marijuana in his car. At the time estranged from his future wife, who was pregnant with their second child, Tyree recalls it as “that brick-wall type moment.”
He has been clean since; the couple married in 2004. Today he wants to help kids and proclaim his faith.
“There is no other way to kind of live in life, especially when you’ve been given this opportunity,” Tyree said. “Role model is just who you are when you come into the realm of athletics. You don’t have to be asked to be a role model.”
Still recovering from off-season knee surgery, Tyree knows nothing is guaranteed when he comes to training camp in Albany next month. (He said he should be ready to practice by the start of camp. ) There’s a logjam at receiver, but Tyree said he’s not stressing over a roster spot.
“If they cut me, that’s God’s will,” he shrugs. “And I believe that the door that will be opened will be greater than the door that just closed. That’s just my faith.”
Tyree is willing to roll with things, relying on faith and ability. But he does carry one beef: Harrison’s recent comments that the Giant’s catch was lucky. “Ninety-nine times out of a 100 that play is not going to get made. It’s not,” Tyree readily admits. Still...
“It wasn’t a lucky catch,” Tyree said. “ It was a divine catch.
”No one is really that lucky. Luck is finding a dollar or finding $ 50 on the street.... That [catch ] was a miracle. “
You know, the grab still doesn’t really have a name. Divine Intervention ? That might work.
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